Aurora Borealis

Hi, I am sharing the design I produced for the AALL and CREATE Challenge 5, The Americas. This has been inspired by my time in Alaska, such a wonderful place, with it's many different facets. While there I was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. What I saw, will never be forgotten, it was truly magical. I wanted to capture the dancing lights in this artwork, using shades of green and yellow as well as put across the wow I felt at the time.

I wanted to include photos in my project, so after positioning them, I added my elements. The boxes would have the letters inside 'Alaska'. I also added the outline map of Alaska.

Next I added the letters using my mixed font stamp set from Clarity.

Using a ruler and a black Copic multiliner, I added lines to a selected point, to give the illusion that these were shooting from the page, this would be my extra large format feature.

I created a frame around the page, which would remain white on completion. Using Pebeo Drawing Gum I masked each element on the page.

I had a final mock up with the photos I had selected to work out my next steps.

I started with a landscape, using Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire and Black soot. This would have to be a lot darker than normal in order to achieve the results I wanted.

On the left hand side of my piece, I added splats of Drawing Gum to the mountain tops to suggest snow, before adding the mountains with distress inks. The colour here was lighter than the hills as I was stamping trees later and wanted it to appear as if light from the Aurora was shining from behind them.

Next I started the task of creating the 'Northern Lights', I had practiced multiple times to try to get the dancing effect rather than flat colour with many types of media. Eventually I chose to use Distress inks with shades of green, also adding blues and yellows, which gave further shades of green where they mixed.

I then started building up the dark sky behind, carefully trying to keep the ghostly effect, bringing the sky to life, as if it were dancing across the sky.

I then removed all of the drawing gum carefully.

Using alcohol markers I coloured my design. The outline of the map of Alaska was deeper, as I was covering that later. I also decided to leave the letterboxes white, so as not to detract from the sky.

Using Cosmic Shimmer glue, I covered Alaska with 'Ice Diamond' a Crushes Glass product, giving a frosty and sparkling appearance while allowing the colour to shine through.

Here is my finished piece.

Thank you ever so much for popping by to see my post today. I hope you like the finished piece, the photos along with the step by step. Take care and Happy Crafting.